Posts in category Scouting

Hunting season is over, but that doesn’t mean that you’re stuck waiting until the leaves begin to turn before getting ready for next season. There’s a saying that goes something like this: “Proper Prior Preparation Prevents Pretty Poor Performance.”

All too often I’ve found myself waiting until the season is about to begin, usually around the time I pick up my hunting license in late August, before beginning to check my equipment and scout the properties I have permission to hunt. This is a recipe for an unsuccessful season and has left me fruitless in my search for wild game on more than one occasion. With just a few chores out of the way however it’s possible to be prepared when opening day sneaks up on you this year.

To start with, don’t neglect any equipment kept out on the land itself. If you have a deer stand that stays up year-round, it’s a good idea to clean it out periodically so that you’re not sharing it with a bunch of spiders, wasps, mice, and other pests on the first day of deer camp. In states where it is legal, tend to any bait stations and game cameras you have set up. Replace the batteries in game cameras and feeders where necessary.

In areas where electronic monitoring and baiting is not legal, take the time to make notes of recent activity. Scouting like this is probably the most important thing you can do to ensure you have a successful season. Patterning animals during the summer months will help you to better determine where the best areas to hunt will be once the season begins. Simply by spending more time in the same environment as your prey will better allow you to understand their routines and note any changes.

Take a walk through the area you normally hunt. Deer and other game animals change their habits over time. Was a scrape that is normally active ignored this year? What about bedding areas? Has excessive rain or a drought changed the areas where water can be found? Changes in weather will affect what foods are abundant or scarce. I carry a handheld GPS with me during these little scouting trips so that I can mark areas of interest.

Of course it isn’t always possible to venture outdoors on a regular basis. Perhaps the area you hunt is far away, or family and work obligations take priority. There is still quite a bit you can do in the evenings at home. During the heat of the summer, when the blazing sun makes it more comfortable to stay indoors with the air-conditioner on full blast, I like to take the time to detail strip and clean my hunting rifles and shotguns.

The first step, after ensuring the firearm is unloaded, is to field strip it. Next remove the forearm and stock from the barrel. Clean out any dust, dirt, or other debris that has found its way in there. Spending hours prone in the dirt, climbing into and out of trees, and wandering through thick undergrowth is a fantastic way to get all manner of gunk in your gun and none of it is good for its accuracy and reliability.

While we’re on the topic of firearm maintenance, when was the last time you removed all of the copper from your barrel? Use an ammonia-based compound to clean out any copper fouling and follow that up by scrubbing the barrel with a non-embedding bore compound.

That done, it’s time to detail clean and re-oil the bolt and trigger assembly of your rifle. The bolt itself should be broken down according to the manufacturer’s instructions, cleaned, re-oiled, and reassembled on an annual basis. The trigger assembly should also be cleaned and lightly oiled, though a total disassembly is usually not recommended. Instead, use a toothbrush to remove dirt and debris and re-oil or grease according to the manufacturer’s recommendations.

If you use an autoloading shotgun or rifle, take care to inspect and clean the recoil spring. In most models the recoil spring tube extends into the buttstock where it tends to attract dirt and grime. The recoil spring in an AR-15 style rifle for example is generally fairly easy to service. Other makes and models will require a bit more work, but it remains important to clean out and lightly oil the recoil assembly on your automatic.

Scope bases and rings should also be checked for play or loose components. Use a bit of thread lock on any bolts or screws that have come loose. Sling swivel studs should also be inspected for any excessive play. I usually just snug them down if they are loose and add a very small bit of RTV silicone around the base where the stud touches the stock to keep dirt and moisture out.

If there is any equipment that should be sent to a gunsmith or archery shop for service or repair the summer months are the perfect time to do so. August and September mark the beginning of the busy season for these businesses and you may face a long wait before your equipment is ready. Get your bow, rifle, or shotgun into the shop now and you’ll be all set to hunt when the season starts. Additionally you’ll help to support the businesses we rely on when their budgets shrink during the off-season.

Finally, if you hunt from a tree stand, you owe it to yourself to carefully inspect your safety harness and all of the straps and ropes on the harness and stand itself. If there is any sign of fraying or stitching that is beginning to come loose, replace the equipment immediately. Falls out of tree stands or elevated platforms kill more people every year than any other cause while hunting. Don’t become one of those statistics.

If you take care of your equipment during the off-season, it will be ready for you when the season begins. Know the land you hunt on and know your equipment. Even if maintenance is not required, the increased familiarity you’ll gain with your gear and the territory you hunt will pay off dividends.

It’s critically important to know the land you hunt. A while back I wrote about a hunt I went on with a close friend of mine. We were pursuing feral hogs in Northeast Texas, but a severe drought had significantly altered their range. Areas that were normally lush and wet, perfect hog territory, were now dry.

I knew the importance of scouting the land, but neglected to take into consideration the difference that changes in weather patterns would make. This year I’m not making that same mistake.

Many large game species change their habits significantly with the seasons, and once again we’ve seen an abnormally dry summer in the areas I plan on hunting. I took the time this week to scout out a few areas to see how the patterns had changed.

True to form, areas where water normally flowed that were now dry were devoid of tracks. Deer, hog, and turkey alike were tending to stick to flowing creeks and rivers, larger ponds and lakes, and areas with human activity where they might find irrigated crops or livestock ponds and waterholes.

Game trails that had been frequently used in years past were now overgrown and devoid of fresh scat, hair, tracks, and other indications of recent use. In a few areas in the river bottoms however new game trails were in evidence along with numerous tracks and other signs.

Bedding areas such as this one are sure sign of recent deer activity.

With forbs and grasses in short supply, the local deer and hogs had been raiding nearby irrigated fields and even sharing stock tanks with some cattle. This change from their habits when food and water is abundant necessitated some alteration of the normal paths they took to and from their bedding areas. After a bit of work checking out the new paths, I figured out the daily activity of the deer and narrowed down where I thought they bedded down during the day.

Now that I had patterned the deer, it was time to start looking for likely areas for scrapes. Though it is still too early for the rut for deer to begin actively visiting scrapes, most bucks will be scraping the velvet from their fresh grown antlers and trees near game trails and other areas showing recent deer activity will soon bear signs of rubbing.

If you’re scouting the land for the upcoming deer season and are having trouble finding signs of activity, try searching along the banks of rivers and creeks that are still running, or walk along the areas between forests and fields. Transition zones such as these are favored by deer. Often you will be able to spot a game trail crossing a small stream or entering dense woods on the edge of a field.

Look for natural funnels in the landscape. Deer won’t generally walk along ridgelines or cross over hilltops. Instead, they tend to follow the easier paths along the same elevation. If there is a draw or valley, check for activity in the bottomlands.

Don’t forget that once the season starts deer will usually change their patterns. Once the crops are harvested and humans once again make their presence known at the trailheads, it’s like a switch is flipped and deer completely alter their routine. These habits can evolve further as the rut begins. If you spot a scrape this early in the rut, go ahead and mark it on your GPS or identify a landmark so that you can find it later. Deer will often use the same scrapes year after year, so even if it looks old and disused it will likely draw attention from eager bucks, and does in estrus, as the rut begins to peak.

Next week we’ll go over more of the changes that deer go through as autumn begins in earnest, and talk about how to change your strategy to find that big buck you’ve been seeing all summer that has up and disappeared with the first hint of cooler weather.

Don’t Forget: This month is Kilted to Kick Cancer month

We’re raising money to help promote prostate and testicular cancer awareness and to help find a cure for this devastating disease. Our goal is to raise $50,000 inside of 30 days, and we need your help! It doesn’t have to be much – a donation of only $10 can go a very long way – so help us in our cause and give what you can using the link below.

In our journey to get Evyl Robot his first deer (or feral hog) on his property in Central Oklahoma, we’ve scouted the area extensively, cataloged game trails and sources of food and water, and set up a game camera to get a rough census of the local wild game population.

There have been numerous crows, tons of raccoons, squirrels, rabbits, not a small number of deer, but no feral hogs. And this past weekend we got the first evidence of predators (other than the two legged kind) captured on the Moultrie game camera.

To me, hunting is a year-round activity. Even when game are not in season, days on end are spent in the woods hiking and scouting learning about the animals and their habits. Where legal, bait stands have to be refilled even in the off-season, and shooting lanes around blinds and stands have to be maintained.

Recently my day job has kept me behind a desk and out of the woods so I haven’t been able to be as diligent at scouting. In fact, I haven’t made it out into the woods at all since April this year. Naturally, as I watch deer season come to a close, I’ve got the urge to get out and see what I can find. But I’m afraid that without having the chance to scout my favorite hunting grounds before hand I’d just be wasting my time.

This has me looking at paying for a guided hunt.

Guided hunts come in many forms, and many prices. Some take place on huge 10,000 acre ranches with miles of 10 foot fences keeping monster bucks and does alike on the property. Smaller operations on ranches only a thousand acres or so in size offer a bit better odds for a hunter who only has a limited amount of time for a day-hunt. These kind of enter a bit of a moral gray are for me though. Even if the animals are wild, not hand-raised, if the herd is captive on a thousand acres or so, can we really call it hunting?

Then there are the “canned-hunts” that take place on facilities that are much smaller, only a few hundred acres, with bottle-fed bucks with no fear of humans wandering the park-like grounds. I’m not even sure these even qualify as hunting. Harvesting, maybe. Regardless, many of these operations are pretty unethical in my opinion.

Google “Guided Texas Deer Hunt” and you’re instantly bombarded with literally thousands of options. Most of these offer “guaranteed” trophy bucks with kill fees based on the size of the rack. Deer breeding and “hunting” ranches have become a multi-BILLION dollar business lately. Naturally however these outfits spend thousands of dollars on ads and SEO to remain near the top of the search results. When a quality “shooter” buck can cost an operator over ten thousand dollars, and exotics even more, it’s easy to see why.

Show me a low-fenced ranch where the guides have spent days scouting out the best locations, identifying scrapes and noting what game trails are active, and that’s where I want to be. Finding a quality guided hunt like this is not very easy however, and this late in the season many ranches are fully booked up.

I’m keeping my eyes peeled If I don’t get a chance to go up to Oklahoma to hunt with Evyl Robot before their gun season is over, I may just find a nice big low fenced ranch with a quality management program where the bucks roam freely and the does have never seen the inside of a stock trailer.

The severe drought that has stricken Texas for the past year has affected more than just farmers and ranchers. Hunters and outdoorsmen will find this fall radically different than last year.

Hog Blog author Phillip Loughlin is moving to Texas from California (congrats Phillip! Texas welcomes you!) and has been searching for suitable property in Central Texas. Much to his dismay, all of the land in this part of the state is looking incredibly parched and dry right now. Even the invasive (and resilient) cedars are beginning to look dry and crispy from the oppressive heat and lack of rainfall.

He speculates on making potential properties attractive to wild game, saying

The trick is to make my little place more attractive than the places around me. I’ll need to develop water sources and food. How much does it cost to maintain a few feeders, and how many do I really need on a relatively small (100-200 acre) property? Will I need an extra well to supply wildlife water?

Encounters such as this are becoming more and more frequent around the corn feeder as wild game are concentrated into the small areas where food and water can be found.

Mr. Loughlin probably already knows this, but I’ll lay it out for other readers: hunting medium and large game in drought conditions is actually fairly easy. You simply need a water source. Most rural Texas properties are dotted with stock tanks, small ponds of water used to keep cattle hydrated. Some are fed by wells, but most are naturally filled by seasonal creeks, streams, or simply by rainfall runoff from nearby fields.

Once established, especially during drought conditions, a water and food source such as this can continue to encourage wild game to become permanent visitors, if not residents, on even small properties of just a couple of hundred acres. Dense cover nearby will naturally encourage deer, hogs, and other critters to frequent the area.

If there is no natural water on the property, and stock tanks are dry or non-existent, it’s not difficult to set up a simple water source. Deer and hogs have an acute sense of smell and can locate water sources from miles away. By simply setting up a trough and automatic-waterer, you can soon establish a reliable water source for wild game. For truly primitive properties, this may mean drilling a well and installing some water lines, but if there is already water and power service to the land you don’t necessarily need a second well to keep your water source full. It’s not terribly difficult to bury a 1/2″ PVC line out to the trough from the same pump that supplies the residence.

In Texas, where baiting is legal, locating game becomes even easier. Most deer and hog hunters in Texas use corn and high-protein feeders set on a timer to dispense feed once or twice a day. To hunters in other states where baiting is illegal, this seems anathema to the ethical hunter but, as any Texas hunter will tell you, knowing where the deer or hogs might be is no guarantee of a successful hunt. Still, if you’ve got a feeder set up, with forbs and mast crops in short supply, it’s a much better bet this year that you’ll see some activity.

Rising corn prices means that it’s going to cost a bit more this year for hunters to to keep the feeders full. Current prices have deer corn hovering around $15-$20 for a 40 pound bag, and those prices are expected to go up even more. Between searing droughts in the south and middle of the states, and drenching floods to the north, the US corn harvest is looking pretty grim. Pick up your corn now before the hunting season begins in earnest and you’ll save a bit of cash.

This fall, deer and hogs will be concentrated in a manner not often seen by hunters. Find the water or food source, set up your blind there, and you’re almost guaranteed success. Deer will be smaller, and bucks will have smaller racks relative to years past, but they will be easier to locate. Scout out the water and food sources on your hunting property, and you’re sure to see activity of all sorts. Unless this fall brings tropical rains, and soon, the deer and hogs will continue to frequent these locations as the season gets underway.

Other than a bunch of squirrels (note to self: next time bring the .22 too) and a few deer (which are out of season), we didn’t see much this trip.

Went out this weekend to help put a dent in the feral hog population on a nearby piece of public hunting lands, as well as fill my freezer a little more.

We arrived predawn and made ready for the hike in. Public lands in this area have been restricted to foot traffic only, and the areas that hold wild pigs are a few miles from the parking area. Not 5 minutes after we began the trek, I began to lose hope that we would be bringing home the bacon this day.

Normally, hog sign is prevalent. Scat, foot prints, and rubs, are generally found in great abundance as we head from the grasslands into the riparian flatwood terrain that feral hogs favor in this region. Instead, I saw very little indication of recent activity.

In retrospect, I should have known better. The past few months have been exceptionally dry, and while this often causes wild game to travel father to find food, hogs tend to stick closer to water sources than other medium sized game. As the streams and rivers in the area dried up or slowed to a trickle, the local swine population likely retreated to areas where water was more easily found.

Undeterred, we continued to hike in until we came to the swampy bottoms surrounding a major creek. Hog sign was indeed abundant here, but it was old. Weeks and even months old in some cases. While the hogs may have been here in the past, they had long since moved on.

I spotted a deer, a small buck that snorted when he noticed our presence before staring at us a few brief seconds. Deer season had ended weeks ago, so we just stood there watching the buck watching us. Eventually, deciding he’d seen enough, the buck sneezed and bounded off into the forest.

The morning was turning into midday and the sun, for brief moments, began to burn through the grey haze overhead. Hog activity would be low until later in the evening when the heat from an early spring warm front began to wane. We stopped for a break and a snack to contemplate the lack of hogs and our rotten luck.

Ideally, had I been by myself, I’d have headed farther south into the deeper swamps and lowlands to seek out the areas that the hogs had retreated too. We had already hiked nearly 4 miles into the woods, and the area I had in mind was another 2 miles further.

There was no vehicle or ATV traffic allowed on the property we were hunting. Wherever we harvested a hog, we would have to hike it back out the same distance over rough terrain. Having made that type of hike before, I wasn’t looking forward toward dragging or carrying a few hundred pounds of meat 6 miles or more back to where we parked without the aid of a horse or 4-wheeler.

My hunting partner was new to the concept of a “walk-in-hunt” but that was the only type available on the public lands we were on. His muscles fatigued from the hike in, he’d stumbled a couple of times and pulled muscles in both legs.

Between his fatigue and my lack of desire to haul any hogs that we found the long hike back out, we decided to take advantage of the lack of midday activity and head back to the truck to reposition to a different location for that evening. When we got back however, after a few minutes rest, he decided his legs had gotten the better of him. He wouldn’t be joining me on any more stalks that day.

I pondered the situation for a few minutes, and decided that we were going call it a day. It wouldn’t be fair to leave my hunting buddy in the truck while I went out on another stalk that afternoon. We packed it in but, determined to not have wasted the entire day, I decided to head to a new location closer to the lake and the the water to scout out for any signs of hog activity.

We weren’t successful in taking any hogs on this trip, but the trip as whole was still a success. We learned where the hogs were not and, more importantly, I learned an important lesson about planning the trip.

First and foremost, as important as it is to know your own physical limits when planning on a long hike and stalk, it is equally as important to be aware of the physical conditioning of your companions. Whether you are hunting, hiking, backpacking, or stuck in life or death survival situation, you are always only as strong as your weakest link.

In retrospect, I should have scouted the property more recently and, with the knowledge that my hunting buddy did not have much experience taking part in long stalks, planned on setting up a blind closer to where the hogs were located.

For experienced hunters, it’s usually not a big deal to pack up for an impromptu day hunt with little pre-planning. When taking out a new hunter however, plan ahead. It can make the experience more enjoyable both for you and for the newbie, and that can make the difference between creating a lifelong hunter or turning somebody off to the activity forever.

Checked the game camera last weekend out at a friend’s lease. The fall season is shaping up pretty good. This big solitary boar was seem frequently at the feeder. That’s one of the largest hogs I’ve seen in this area… Probably weighs close to 200 pounds if I had to guess.

There aren’t many wild hogs in this area, but partly because there aren’t many they’re not hunted much and this allows the ones that are here more opportunities to grow to sizes like this. To get an idea of just how big this pig is, compare him to the yearling deer snapped by the same game cam.

September 1st marks the beginning of hunting season here in Texas, and you better believe I’ll be out stalking the woods. Not having access to private hunting property, I’m left accessing public lands. Texas doesn’t have much public hunting land compared to many other western states, but there are still nearly 1 million acres available to anyone with a hunting license and annual public hunt permit.

Archery season for deer doesn’t begin until October 2nd, but certain Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs) open up for feral hog on September 1st. I haven’t hunted this particular parcel of land before, and won’t have time to scout it before heading out. Here, the internet becomes incredibly valuable. Using Google Earth, I surveyed the WMA. The detail of the aerial satellite photos makes it possible to discern hardwood stands from pine forests. For even more detail however, I use an even more incredibly detailed and useful resource, the Gap Analysis Program’s Land Cover Viewer.

Developed by the University of Idaho and the National Biological Infrastructure Information program, the highly detailed land map uses advanced satellite and thermal imagery to determine the precise makeup of plant life, soil, and water. Being paid for in part with your tax dollars, the program is made available to anyone on the internet. At Level 3, the most detailed level, you can see all 590 different types of terrain.

Since I’m going to be after feral hogs, I’m looking for mostly hardwood oak forests and riparian terrain with dense cover. Using the Land Cover Viewer it’s easy to zoom in on the terrain and determine where that cover is. In the mosquito infested Texas summer heat, hogs seek out cool relief from wallows they make in muddy terrain. Ravines, bogs, swamps, and flooded timber all make excellent hidey holes for heat stressed porkers.

This trip is primarily to scout out a good location to set a blind for deer season. No amount of research or scouting via maps and photos on the internet can ever substitute for actual boots on the ground. Still, I’m hopeful that a bit of research on the internet might result in my finding a nice hog or two, if they’re there, while I’m out scouting for deer.